When a real princess falls in love with a man who is definitely not a prince, a royal fairy tale turns dangerous.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a beautiful princess, Flicka von Hannover, who lived an enchanted life. She jetted around Europe staging charity events with friends, had married a handsome prince in the most spectacular royal wedding of the 21st century, and should have lived happily ever after.

But then she found the handsome prince in bed with a duchess. And then a coffee shop barista. And then her own goddamn secretary.

Finally, the beautiful princess had had enough of the cheating prince, and she ran away.

Once she had stepped out of the royal fairy tale, life became grayer, grittier, and rougher. The prince didn’t like that she had left and sent henchmen to take her back to the castle. Her worried royal brother sent people to look for her, too.

But the princess didn’t want to be found. The princess got a job and made her own way in the world. Even cut off from everyone she knew, she was more resourceful than she had thought she might be. She did okay. From hiding, she sent legal separation papers and then divorce documents, but the prince wouldn’t sign them. He said he wouldn’t let her go. Even in these modern times, the prince could lock the princess up in a dungeon of legal forms and provisions that she wouldn’t be able to break out of. The prince wanted his princess back because he couldn’t take his throne without her.

Until a man walked into her bar one day, one who was frankly not a handsome prince.

He was the last man on Earth the princess should have fallen in love with.

Her Serene Highness Friederike Marie Louise Victoria Caroline Amalie Alexandra Augusta—Prinzessin von Hannover und Cumberland, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and heir to an assortment of other useless titles to extinct kingdoms and duchies but including a three-digit succession number to the British throne through George V of Hannover who had been George III of England—is staring straight at you.Her golden blond hair curls in waves past her shoulders. Her heart-shaped face and pixieish chin are level and serious.Her clear green eyes don’t waver from yours.She says, “Let me tell you a story—a fairy tale, actually—but it’s not about a princess. No, it’s about a golden-haired little girl who has no shits left to give.”